should libtool check for the correct version of find?

[Matthew Arnison]

Hi libtool developers and users,

libtool appears to depend on Unix find. Under Cygwin, an incorrect path can 
cause the Windows FIND to be used instead. To the untrained eye, (that is, 
me two days ago) it's not obvious from the output of configure and libtool 
that this has happened. The only warning I got was this:

FIND: Parameter format not correct

buried in the make output. The make does not actually fail until about a 
page later in the transcript when a link fails with a series of "undefined 
reference" errors.

My suggestion is that libtool should get configure to check for the correct 
version of find (i.e. Unix find not WINDOWS find) as part of checking the 
general environment. I feel that configure's job is to check that all the 
correct tools are in place to do a build, so if libtool is used, then 
configure/libtool should check which find is being run.

I know that the Cygwin path order is a FAQ:

http://www.cygwin.com/faq/faq_4.html#SEC42

however in my case all the other standard Unix tools seemed to be working 
OK. Although Cygwin sets up the correct PATH by default in /etc/profile, 
if you login remotely this can be bypassed.

Unfortunately I do not have time to contribute a patch. But I thought you 
might be interested to hear of this case. I think it might save some other 
poor soul from the same painstaking search I just made.

Cheers,
Matthew.

-- 
Matthew Arnison
Research Engineer
Canon Information Systems Research Australia